Modern English is significantly different from its original form - Old English, or Anglo-Saxon. A vivid example of this is the ancient monuments of literature. They are unlikely to be understood by a person who is far from the study of ancient literature. The picture below shows the changes in Psalm 23 over 1000 years.
What contributed to such obvious changes in the language? How is the modern version different from the original?
What periods is English divided into?
The history of the Old English language began in the 5th century, along with the first Germanic settlements on the territory of modern Britain. Over time, under the influence of the socio-political situation, the language underwent various changes and was divided into:
- Old English period of the English language was widespread from the 5th to the 7th centuries, marked by the arrival of the Germanic tribes and the appearance of writing;
- middle English period of the English language - from the 5th to the 15th centuries At this time, Britain was conquered by the Normans, and in 1475 the era of printing begins;
- Modern English - XVcentury - to the present day.
Old English is characterized by the presence of dialects that appeared after the conquest of Britain by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. There were 4 dialects in total: Northumbrian, Mercian, Wessex and Kentish. The first two were spoken by the Angles, but due to the fact that the territories of their residence were far from each other, a number of distinctive features appeared in each of them. Wessex was spoken by the Saxons and Kentish by the Jutes.
How was the vocabulary of the language formed?
Scholars estimate that the Old English dictionary consisted of 30,000 to 100,000 words. They are divided into 3 groups:
- specific Old English words only found in this language;
- Indo-European - the oldest words denoting the names of plants, animals and body parts, verbs of action and a wide range of numerals;
- Germanic - words that occur only in this group and are common only in the languages of their group.
Old English had approximately 600 borrowings from Celtic and Latin, influenced by the following historical events.
- I century AD e. The Roman Empire under Emperor Claudius took over Britain and made it their colony. The territories divided into military camps later became English cities: Lancaster, Manchester, Lincoln. The endings "caster" and "chester" in Latin meant "camp", and the ending "koln" - "settlement".
- V century. Britain was invaded by the Saxons, Angles, and Germanic tribes.the Utes, whose dialect supplanted the Celtic language. The Germanic tribes brought to Old English not only their vocabulary, but also borrowings from Latin: silk, cheese, wine, pound, butter and others.
- 597 year. The spread of Christianity led to the need to borrow words to denote religious concepts: bishop, candle, angel, devil, idol, anthem, monk and others. The names of plants, diseases, medicines, animals, clothes, household items, dishes and products were also borrowed from Latin: pine, plant, lily, fever, cancer, elephant, camel, cap, raddish and others. In addition to direct borrowing, tracing was widely used - literally translated words. For example, Monday is short for Monadie, the literal translation of Lunae Dies (“Day of the Moon”).
- 878 year. Anglo-Saxons and Danes sign a peace treaty, as a result of which the latter receive part of the British lands. This fact also influenced the language, in which words such as axle, anger, and the letter combinations sc- and sk- appeared. Examples: skin, skull, sky.
- 790 year. Viking raids led to the borrowing of the words cast, call, take, die. ill, ugly, they, theirs. both. The dying off of flexia also belongs to this period.
Old English grammar
Old English had more complex grammar than modern English.
- when writing they used runic, Gothic and Latin alphabets.
- pronoun, noun and adjective changed by gender.
- exceptsingular and plural there was also a dual plural: ic (I) / we (we) / wit (we are two).
- 5 cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and instrumental.
- glaed - joyful;
- glades - joyful;
- gladum - joyful;
- glaedne - joyful;
- glade - joyful.
Nouns, adjectives and pronouns were declined depending on the ending
How is the verb system different?
Old English verbs were a complex grammatical system.
- Verbs were divided into strong, weak and others. The strong had 7 conjugations, the weak had 3, and the others had 2.
- There was no future tense, there was only present and past.
- The verb changed in person and number.
What is the difference between Modern English and Old English?
Old English underwent a number of changes due to historical events before it acquired its modern form. What is the difference between the modern form of the language and the original?
- From 5 cases, only 2 are left - this is general and possessive.
- There are no conjugations in the modern verb system, instead of them there are irregular verbs.
- The future tense has appeared, which differs from the past and present by the absence of its verb form. This means that in this form the verb does not change, and the word will acts as an assistant verb.
- Gerund appeared -impersonal form of a verb with properties of a noun and a verb.
What words were in the Old English dictionary?
British lands at different times belonged to the Romans, Scandinavians and Germanic tribes. What words were in the dictionary?
- mona - moon - moon;
- brodor - brother - brother;
- modor - mother - mother;
- sunu - son - son;
- beon - be - to be;
- don - do - do;
- ic - I - I;
- twa - two - two;
- pet - that - then;
- handus - hand - hand;
- clipian - call - call;
- brid - bird - bird.
Despite the fact that Old English and modern English are fundamentally different from each other, the former had a great influence on the development of the latter.
